Over the last decade, there has been a merger of two of the most successful communications tools ever developed—mobile communications and the Internet. The Internet has provided access to many kinds of services, information, and content through one common interface. Mobile communications has provided the concept of being reachable at any time and with the ability to reach other people or services quickly. Combining the freedom of the Internet with the reachability and immediacy of mobile networks, the Mobile Internet has been born.
Service creation for the Mobile Internet is based on an open content format, e.g., eXtensible Markup Language (XML), and Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) defined protocols, such as the Session Initiation Protocol (SIP). Service mobility through open content format provides accessibility of a consumer's personalized services through any access network or device, whereby service reachability through the open content format provides services that follow the consumer wherever he or she may go.
While services such as messaging and browsing continue to be important to today's Mobile Internet user, person to person communications will remain as one of the most important services offered by the Mobile Internet. As the Mobile Internet technology advances, communications will combine multiple media types and communication methods with presence and community information, not only to enhance person to person communication, but also to enhance multi-point to multi-point communication, i.e., conferencing. With the use of Internet Protocol (IP), for example, addition of rich media is facilitated through the use of standardized networking and signaling protocols.
A media enhanced call, i.e., rich call, may be defined as a voice or video conversation that is supported with concurrent access to an image, data, or other information during a single session. SIP will provide enabling technology for rich calls, where the Web and Mobile domains may be joined for true service mobility and access independence. SIP's support for rich calls will add “see what I see”, or “keyhole” capability for consumers through a combination of voice, mail, Web browsing, instant messaging, voice over IP (VoIP), and other services. Although it is not necessary to employ VoIP or IP telephony service machinery for rich call servicing, it is expected that IP telephony and/or IP multimedia will emerge as the technology of choice for the rich call environment.
Today, keyhole processing has been introduced into browsing services, whereby the server that is hosting the visited Web site may offer content other than that provided by the extensible markup. Such content, for example, may include live video feeds from traffic cameras dispatched throughout the city where the consumer resides. In such an instance, however, a server to person topology exists, whereby a server within the network provides the video feed directly to the person that is currently visiting the Web site. Future keyhole processing within the Mobile Internet will not only involve such a server to person topology, but alternate multi-domain environments will also be involved in keyhole processing. The multi-domain environments will include, for example, a Personal Computer (PC) or other hardware platform involved with a mobile terminal during a person to person communication session, or conversely a Personal Digital Assistant (PDA) to mobile terminal communication session.
As person to person communications improve, versatility and consumer satisfaction continue to grow. Accordingly, conventional person to person communication sessions involving multi-domain environments continue to require refinement. One such area of improvement relates to communication sessions involving video data that may be required to be exchanged between the communication session participants.
Accordingly, there is a need for continued improvement in the communications industry for enablement of rich call sessions in a multi-domain environment.